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Colonialism goes SpecIal Sl4'Plemmt: "humanitarian" "New world order" in Somalia and Haiti sets globe ablaze Editorial page 10 PageS Freedom 5 ialist

Dec. 1993 -Feb. 1994 Volume 14, Number 4 ($1.00 outside U.S.) 75f/. UNEMPLOYMENT Your pain is corporate gain

BY LINDA AVERILL

roductivity is up. More than • The low productivity of U.S. workers is a myth. Since 1947, factory output in ever, U.S. labor is generating in­ the U.S. has soared 400% - with only a 17% Increase in the workforce. creased bang for the buck. That's • From 1973 to 1992, real wages feil19%. the good news. P • During the 1980s, annual incomes fOi the richest 20% of The bad news is that living standards and wages are falling; good jobs are disap­ Americans rose 14.7%, while for the poorest 20% they pearing. dropped 3.6%. An American Management Assodation • A survey of 35,242 companies in 1990 and 1991 showed that survey showed that 47 percent of major even when openings for whites increased, African Americans lost a businesses axed staff from mid-1992 to 59,479 jobs. mid-1993; cuts averaged 10.4 percent. net One-third of U.S. workers now have • 900,000 factory jobs have disappeared since January 1991. only part-time or temporary jobs. By the year ZOOO, that fraction is ~pected to • In ~."'!.~,~ s~ ~ ofJ!.t~~~-~ j~.,~e!4,t.~-time. grow"toniilL . Sources - Federal Reserve Board; AFt-C/O News; House Ways and Means Downsizing, rightsizing, re-engineer­ Committee; EEOC; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Economic Policy Institute. ing. These are the newly coined euphe­ misms that corporate spin doctors are enon is global. A 1993 survey found that becomes the workers' enemy. Owners using for today's sweeping layoffs. And more than half of Europe's biggest compa­ take for themselves the extra value created while President Clinton is promising more nies intend to send workers packing in the and use the greater efficiency to cut back jobs, his top advisers aren't so confident. next two years, in eVen greater numbers on labor. Laura Tyson, head of the President's than has occurred so far in the U.S. Marx' understanding of this fundamen­ Council of Economic Advisers, acknowl­ Karl Marx - not a presidential adviser tal feature of the profit system led him to edged that a rise in Gross Domestic Prod­ - explained this high-anxiety trend sci­ fight for its replacement with sodalism, uct in 1992 did not translate into a rise in entifically. He meticulously proved that where the means of production are owned jobs - although it did boost profits. the private enterprise system increasingly and controlled by workers. Only then will "Nobody is safe" is how Labor Secretary impoverishes workers with each techno­ all members of society enjoy the expand­ Robert Reich bluntly summarized the situ­ logical advance - that, under capitalism, ing wealth they produce. ation for workers. productivity The phenom- For all but a few, a lose-lose proposition. It's not just corporations in trouble that are sloughing off employ­ ees. Huge, stable profit-makers like Procter Dateline CaDa~a & Gamble and Anheuser-Bush are slash­ ing jobs. In Hungary, the CEO of GE Lighting Europe and Tungsram put it this way: Proof positive that "Speed and productivity are key factors," said Charles Peiper in a March 1993 Wall Street Journal. "If you can't go faster and take the cost down, there's no future." His NAFTA kills lobs company plans to shed 4S percent of its warfare. Faced with global recessio~ workforce over three years. BY MARcEL HATCH d hrtnking or impoverished mar Capitalist competition is cutthroat. AND I)n.AN I(ENDRICil ~ts ~odaY'smultinatiOnalsarescr:n­ Factories that can produce millions of one workers and getting blm'g to save their profits. Degra :.~ product in a millisecond have glutted more out of each, or by paying them less. ctober S 1987 was a fateful labour is their only solution, a~ d d world markets. Thus survival depends on And a worker paid less today, or a day for' Canadians. Th~t and NAYf A are means to thIS ~n . producing goods ever more cheaply. worker in the unemployment line, is a was the day that Cana~a s ~international workingclass unIted But this scenario has rock-bottom con­ penniless consumer tomorrow. Tory Prime Minister, Bnan front is the only force capable of up- tradictions. Marxists call this the crisis of over­ OMulron handed the country over to setting their plans. Businesses must expand or die, so their production. U S mul~ational corporations. That expenses for raw materials and capital im­ This syndrome led to the Great Depres­ w~~ the day he signed th~:~ rr::!~ FIA's violent impact. The ~A provements must also expand. Only labor sion in the 1930s, and it took world war to Agreement (FIA) between .. s created a mine field of calamtties costs can be reduced, either by hiring fewer 10 page.J ha people Canada. di dti- for poor and worki ng . h FIA TheFIAbindseveryCana an . • Mulroney pledged th~t t ~ New Freewav Hall zen to it. It can strike do~ dome:~ would bring "jobs, jobs: lO~s'19~~t 5018 Rainier Ave. S. BULK RATE I ws that protect health, lobs, a~d . FINs implementation III , U.S. POSTAGE a . nment It gives U.S. bUSIllesses s~~~ than 1.6 million jobshave gone, Seattle, WA 98118 enVlIO '. bo minerals be­ PAID access to the au aye, h Na- m Permanent unemploy- SEATTLE, WA low, and water runrung throug ~:~t ~::~rs above. 14 per~e~~~ ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED PERMIT NO. 1003 tive lands. Canada's manufactunng secto And the FIA experience leaves no shrunk 28 percent, the r~ult of co:~ sed North Ameri- . vi g operatlOnS to doubtthatthe propo ment (NAFIA) panthles mUoS nor Mexico, where labour can Free Trade Agree . sou ern ., 1 and among t h e U ..,S Canada , and MeXICO k f is cheaper, regulations more ax, would be a disaster for the wor ers 0 environmental standards lower. .J to page all three countries. weapons of class These pacts are 2 Freedom SOcialist December 1993-February 1994

In This Issue Letters Vol. 14, No.4 Dec. 1993-Feb. 1994 Palestine The "Voices of Color" column observers affirmed the legitimacy public cynicism is turning into on Palestinian expellees [V14#3] of elections in February ... As a burning outrage. And that's La causa after Chavez 11 was very good, and badly needed. participan t in this year's May Day where rebellion and revolution I'm curious, though, ifthecol­ celebrations in Havana, I could - our constitutional right - The Chicana/o movement: umn ordinarily refers to writers feel the people's love for Fidel... come from. How can it regain its grass­ of color, or simply articles about Barnes' assertion that the Cu­ Monica Hill, Organizer roots grounding, fiery people of color. If the former, ban government needed to chal­ Freedom Socialist Party spirit, and inspirational why is an Israeli-American Jew lenge the embargo is mystifying... Los Angeles, California impact? Activist, analyst, considered a person of color? He should have mentioned the Phyllis Bennis United Nations vote in Nov. 1992, and author Yolanda Alaniz Brooklyn, New York wherein the world made clear its ADL spying offers some penetrating disapproval of that blockade. It has recently come to light answers. Despite these Criticisms, I was thatthe Anti-Defamation League, "Voices of Color" is a regular a longtime Jewish civil rights or­ column coordinated and usually glad to read Barnes' article, espe­ cially his mention of the Pastors ganization, has been spying on authored by the National Comrades the labor unions, Left, and anti­ of Color Caucus of the Freedom for Peace caravans. My subscrip­ tion is enclosed. Venceremos! Nazi activists, and selling/shar­ Socialist Party and Radical Women, ing the information with police Talking about a revolution 4 whose members are all people of MauraBaird Santa Cruz, California and the FBI in 20 Cities. Freedom Socialist Party color. The caucus at times invites As if this weren't bad enough, conventioneers took an Jewish writers to address issues be­ ADL "factfinder" Roy Bullock sold unsparing look at the cause of the close links between L.A. show trial intelligence about U.S. activists world and the party. racism and anti-Semitism. -Ed. to the Israeli and South African Despite war and hard backfires governments. times, they reached pro­ No solutions In the LA Four+ trial, the pros­ Bullock spied on the Freedom ecution tried to scapegoat two Socialist, Radical Women, United foundly optimistic The article [on Palestine and young Black men for the explo­ conclusions. Israel] tells half of the story ... Front Against FaScism and the Whether of the extreme right or sion of rage in L.A. in April 1992. FSP along with almost 900 other of the far left - extremism is a Because of non-stop, broad-based organizations. He subsequently place of intellectual and spiritual community organizing led by the peddled this information to a San uncenteredness ... Each side defendants' mothers, which Radi­ Francisco policeman and former Intematlonal Special supplement knows the solutions to the world's cal Women and the Freedom So­ Central American CIA agent. Dateline Canada: "Careening toward problems. There are no solutions cialist Party were a part of, they Bullock launched his spy ca­ "Free trade" 1 the new world" didn't get away with it. reer turning people - mostly 5 - just life as it continues. The trial was never about FSP Convention 4 MB radical Jews - over to HUAC whether Damian Williams and during the McCarthy era. Osten­ Dateline Australia: Features Keith Watson assaulted Reginald Women in prison 10 sibly hired to spy on Nazis, Bul­ Poetry by Black nationalism Denny. It was about whether lock straightforwardly says that East Europe tour 12 Nellie Wong 9 I thought "Ebony and Ivory" people have a right to rebel the Left is the real enemy. Editorials [Clara Fraser, V14#3] was a par­ against centuries of police terror, Several civil lawsuits are pend­ ticularly obnoxious example of legal injustice, and unrelenting ing against ADL and the S.F. po­ National Haiti & Somalia 10 economic deprivation. In the last Unemployment 1 Russia 10 racist paternalism(?) (maternal­ lice, and local coalitions are be­ ism?) ... and a good reason for the decade, state repreSSion has been Sandy Nelson vs. Middle East 10 ing formed in Portland and other continuing necessity of self­ directed most heavily against cities where the cops, working The News Tribune 3 Clara Fraser 11 determination (" nationalism ") youths of color, because they're with ADL, illegally gathered in­ Melba Windoffer 11 Voices of Color 11 being uppermost in the liberation the most openly rebellious. telligence on political activists. strategy of both oppressed people They're also the least organized It is essential that the ADL­ and progre~sive whites. and therefore the most vulner­ police spy network be exposed I suggest you study "Imperial­ able targets. and distnantled .. Police agencies ism and the Split in Socialism" by The trial was mounted to jus­ in every city with ADL "fact­ Lenin if you want to see how an tify intensified police spying on finders" should be forced to open authentic Marxist approaches the L.A. activists and' to re-enforce their files to organizations listed contradiction between oppressor the ruling-class morality of re­ among Bullock's targets. and oppressed nations. pressive violence against our Nothing less than the First Michael Novick morality of self-respect and self­ Amendment right to associate Van Nuys, California defense. and organize is at stake. The trial was a sham. The judge Fred Hyde It is through studying Lenin - was an ex-cop. The prosecutors' Seattle, Washington as well as Black and other theoreti­ key "evidence" was a 30-minute cians - that the FSP arrived at our collage of spliced film taken off If you would like copies of in for­ conclusions about the revolutionary 41 videotapes over seven hours. mation compiled by United Front but non-national nature ofthe Black The press consistently refused to Against Fascism on the ADL net­ liberation struggle in the U.S. -Ed. publicize the defense's argu­ work, send $2.00 to the Freedom ments. And only five courtroom SOcialist, 5018 Rainier Ave. South, seats were open to the public. Seattle, WA 98118. -Ed. Critical support Even so, a jury, representative of I am always glad to see sup­ L.A.'s multi-racial populace, portive articles about Cuba voted not guilty on most counts. Readers are encouraged to submit [V14#3] ... This trial's impact isn't over. letters, news stories, commentary, But I am amazed when the An incurably corrupt justice sys­ cartoons, graphics, photographs, and author calls for "expanding de­ tem and a crumbling economy pertinent resource information on mocracy" ... Two hundred foreign are being roundly exposed, and world and national affairs.

Staff EDUCATION Managing Editor Staff Writer Design II Andrea Bauer Unda Averill Production Hone your knowledge of Marxlsml )oln a freedom Socialist Party Val Mohney study group by calling one of the branches listed below. Production Editorial Assistant Kathy Chang Manager Janet Sutherland Helen Gilbert Los Angeles, Calif. SeaHle, Wash. Kathleen Merrigan Consulting Edlton Camera The ChIcano Struggle: A Ildclal 0,. Struggle AgaInst l;asclsm In GellDany Yolanda Alaniz II Printing National Movement? Weekly, Sundays, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Production Doug Bames Advertising Services Weekly, Tuesdays, 7:15 p.m.-9:00 p.m. CommunIst ManIfesto, Capital, Assistants Clara Fraser VALCO Graphics Call 213-413-1350. Steve Hoffman PelllJc1lJent Revolution, and more Guerry Hoddersen Weekly, Mondays, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m. SuDocekal Henry Noble New York City Call 206-722-2453. A SocialIst Perspective on Business Manager Illustrator Wendy McPherson John A. Bourque ® ~52 flecto,.al Politics • • • Weekly, Mondays, 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Melboume, Australia Call 212-677-7002. The Freedom Socialist (ISSN 0272-4367) is published quarterly by the Trotsky on An and LIte,.ature Freedom Socialist Party, New Freeway Hall, 5018 Rainier Avenue South, Portland, Ore. Weekly, Thursdays, 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. Seattle, WA 98118. Phone: 206-722-2453. Subscriptions: I-year $5.00 Weekly, beginning in January, topic and times Call 03-387-1843. (institutions $10.00), 2-year Supporting Sub $25.00, 3-year Sustaining Sub to be announced. Call 503-228-3090. $50.00, 5-year Sponsoring Sub $100.00. Add $5.00 for overseas airmail. Vancouve~Canada Back copies $.75 each. Checks or money orders to Freedom Socialist at the San Francisco, Calif. T,.ansltlonal ProlP'aJD to,. Socialist address above. In Australia: I-year $6.00 AUD, airmail. Mail payment to P.O. Box 266, West Brunswick, VIC.3055. Phone: 03-386-5065. In Canada: Trotsky's "Thel,. Mo,.als and Ours" Revolution I-year $6.00 CAD, airmail. Mail paymentto304-1575 Beach Ave., Vancou­ Weekly, Sundays, 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Weekly, Wednesdays, 7:00 p.m.-9:00 p.m. ver, BC V6G 1Y5. Phone: 604-688-5195. Call 415-864-1278. Call 604-688-5195. December 1993-February 1994 Freedom SOcialist 3

Terry Tang, an Asian American woman, welcomed Nelson's challenge to the no­ tion that the further reporters withdraw Sandy Nelson vs. The News Tribune from civic life, the more newspaper cred­ ibility grows. She wrote: "Readers can see through empty gestures. What they want is honest reporting that tackles all sides of First Amendment covers an issue, not adherence to rigid codes they've never heard of." Editor and Publisher, a national maga­ zine for newspaper managers, predicted that the case will have a major impact on journalists too, says ACLU suit the media and acknowledged that Nelson has a good shot at winning. ournalist Sandy Nelson promises that Rights of writers and readers. affairs, whether selectively or with a broad The overwhelming media response to the lawsuit she and the American Nelson is not only a gay-rights advocate brush, they violate the right of readers to Nelson's suit shows that publishers and Civil Liberties Union filed this past but also a well-known SOCialist, all-around know what is happening in the world. broadcasters recognize the threat it poses June will expose the lie of media "ob­ agitator for civil rights, and organizer for They deprive readers of the perspective of to their double standard, under which jectivity" for what it is - a pretext for Tacoma Radical Women. The restriction reporters who have firsthand experience journalists have been expected to be apo­ Jdiscrimination and a ploy by publishers to on her constitutionally protected activi- with the issues of the day." litical serfs while their employers lobby, rob the working press oftheir First Amend­ editorialize, hobnob with the rich and ment rights. Media splash. powerful and otherwise utilize their tre­ "My case is a test between workers and The lawsuit is just mendous influence. bosses, who would control not just our the latest avenue for labor but our thoughts, actions and pas­ No Cheering in pursuing Nelson's re­ Powering up for court. Nelson's sions if we let them. Its outcome is critical the Press Box instatement. For three ACLU attorneys, William Bender and for all members of the press who are gagged Media: Can reporters years, her defense James Lobsenz, are now in the middle of 24 hours a day while their employers freely join partisan causes? committee and her pretrial discovery, the phase of the case in voice their political beliefs and biases and union, Pacific North- which both sides take depositions from IKE MOSI' RF.I'OIlTER:>, SANDY NELSON act politically to further their business of Tacoma's Morning News Tribune is west Newspaper one another to obtain information and La champion of free speech. But while interests," Nelson said at a press confer­ her colleagues worry about pressure from Guild Local 82, have establish the areas of conflict that will be advertisers. Nelson says the vlIlains in her ence at ACLU headquarters in Seattle. story are her editors. who shunted her off fought for her re­ hashed out at trial. to the copy desk because she was active in The suit charges that The News Tribune, a gay-rights organization. Now she's suing porting job through The formal pre-trial questioning of Nel­ them. "Journalists are like serfs:' she says. the daily in Tacoma, Washington, vio­ "We have become the company's property internal channels, son by TNT lawyers, despite some at­ 24 hours 1\ day." Her editors, who plan to lated employment laws and the state con­ fight Nelson's court challenge. say appeals to the Na­ tempted forays into irrelevant matters like just . the stitution when it yanked Nelson from her .bo"!IiI"!"''',I,,,,"on>o! tional Labor Relations the organizational affiliations of other beat as education writer in September 1990. Board, and activists, is sharply confirming the ground Tribune newsroom managers objected public pres­ zero of the case: Do journalists have the to Nelson's off-duty campaigning for hous­ sure on the same rights ,to political self-expression as ing and employment rights for gays and Tribune. other workers - and as their bosses? lesbians, claiming that her activism dam­ But the fil­ Meanwhile, Nelson's defense commit­ aged TNT's appearance of neutrality. Sin­ ing of the suit tee, in cooperation with the Newspaper gling out Nelson to impose a concocted by the ACLU Guild, has won the Washington State La­ pro-management" ethics" rule, they trans­ finally shattered a bor Council's endorsement. It is stepping ferred her permanently to an evening copy­ virtual blackout of up its efforts to gather support and finan­ editing job. They then told her that she the case by the cor- Cial contributions from the many unions could only return to reporting if she ties that keeps her at the copy desk porate media. Articles appeared in News­ and community groups that have a stake dropped her political life entirely. is not enforced against other Tribune jour­ week, Washington Journalism Review, the in winning this vital free-speech fight; an A year later, they busted the workplace nalists engaged in civic and religious ac­ Seattle Times, and the Seattle Post-Intelli­ international petition drive is underway. union. tivities outside the office. gencer, as well as in the Guild Reporter, To be part of this victory-in-the-mak­ "This case is important for all workers "My case is also about the rights of Washington Free Press, and gay papers in ing, send an endorsement or donation to in Washington who do not want their readers and the obligation of the media to Washington, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. the Sandy Nelson Defense Fund at P.O, employers controlling their off-the-job ac­ inform the public," Nelson says. The controversy also became a hot topiC Box 5847, Tacoma, WA 98415, or call the tivities," said ACLU Executive Director "When publishers impose edicts against <

gone on a privatization binge in order to the inhumane profit system head-on. A attract more international trade. The con­ coalition like this can bring together the sequences for Mexican workers have been whole spectrum of groups that "free trade" ••• Job loss ••• NAFTA devastating. Under NAFfA, this down­ is out to ruin: unions, First Nations people, ward spiral will worsen in Mexico, and it family and cooperative farmers, small from the cover from the cover will envelop Canada and the U.S. also. businesses, and the environmental and salvage capitalism then. • Industries where women workers are civil rights movements. Now rivalry over markets is again at a clustered - textiles, food processing, elec­ Tri-country united front can nix U.S. workers have a key role to play in peak. Military spending, which buoyed tronics, light manufacturing, clerical, NAFTA. Canadian unions have orga­ this united front because they live in the U.S. capitalism in the short run, has un­ teaching, healthcare - are hardest hit. nized against the FfA and NAFfA. But command center of imperialism. But to dermined it over the long haul. The astro­ • Companies are using threats to shift they are critically hampered by their re­ realize their incredible potential power, nomical deficit drags on the economy. plants south as leverage to try to win huge fusal to clearly identify the fundamental they need an anti-capitalistpartyoflabour. Attempts to reduce it trigger unemploy­ wage and benefit concessions. goal of North American capital in cutting Who will rise to the challenge of form­ ment and receSSion. Prices continue to • Intensified competition is causing these deals: to gain a chokehold on the ing such a party? It will be the most rise and out-of-control inflation is a con­ small businesses, which employ the ma­ working class of the whole continent and oppressed and least corruptible workers­ stant threat. jority of Canada's workforce, to go bank­ raise the degree of exploitation to unprec­ women, lesbians and gays, people of color Crisis has become normal. rupt at a rate of 75,000 per year. Small edented levels. - the same workers who in each country farmers are losing their land to U.S. agri­ FfA/NAFfA can only be beaten by a possess the integrity, influence, and ini­ War on workers sustains the business at bankruptcy sales. united front that is thoroughly working­ tiative to bust NAFfA and ensure that in economy. In a bid to regain the profit • The government advertised that the class in its aims, unwavering in its interna­ winning this struggle all of North Ameri­ margin it once enjoyed, U.S. capital FfA would bring prices down. Instead, tional solidarity, and willing to confront can labour rises together. C launched a government-sponsored assault costs are soaring. on workers in the 1980s. The most op­ • U.S. business claims that programs pressed and discriminated-against - like Canada's healthcare system, which women, people of color, immigrants, les­ ensures that everybody gets treatment, An'lntcmati°llll$QCiatistfcmlnist bians and gays, the elderly and disabled­ give Canadian companies unfair advan­ qrganizatjon>ln.tbefrontllncs came under most severe attack. Now, even tage. Free abortion, AIDS services, and pre­ RClcfIC8l Of high-paid workers are feeling the heat. and post-natal care are all under the gun. the.filht .nst rtcism, SGi., The solution of Democrats, Republi­ • The number of suicides is up sharply. fasclslI,.nti.pvbigoVy, and cans, and the bureaucrats at the head of So is violence against women, people of Ia~C~.p. the labor movement is to "make America color, immigrants, and lesbians and gays. Wom .... more competitive." Rightwing parties and the fascist move­ But the problem can't be solved by ment are grOwing, as desperate people more competition. Competition is the seek quick answers to Canada's ills. problem. The real solution is cooperation. The Pushing as low as they can go. If SOCialist transformation of society to a NAFfA passes, social programs and ecolo­ CANADA, ',' planned economy run by workers is the gical standards among the three trading VancouYer.115W.12th,Vaooouver, BCVSY only way to create a more just and hu­ partners must be "harmonized" - that is, 1T6.604-874-0535. FAX 604-688·5195. mane tomorrow. And the first step on that they will fall to the least common denom­ road is an uncompromising fight to allevi­ inator, hurting women and children most. • • • ate poverty and misery today through (The sidebar agreements on labour and pursuing demands like these: the environment are vague, full of loop­ • Create full employment by shorten­ holes, and lacking means of enforcement.) ing the work week with no cut in pay. While harmonization of wages isn't • Nationalize hea'thcare, utilities, and mandated, corporations will use the trade other major industries. agreement to pit workers in each country • Rebuild the inner dties by disman­ against each other nevertheless. tling the war machine. Some proponents claim that NAFfA We need an anti-capitalist labor party will "even out" North American wages, allied with the social justice movements stating or implying that NAFfA will actu­ to begin to turn the tide for working ally benefit the lowest-paid workers. people. There's no time to waste! C This is a lie. In recent years, Mexico has 4 Freedom SOcialist December 1993-February 1994

----Freedom. Socialist Party Convention ---- Optimistic rebels gear up for a contradictory but promising decade BY LINDA AVERILL riences, and from the faction fight itself. lesbian and gay movements. exploitation and second-class citizenship In a videotaped speech aired at the Woo told the "subversive" and liberat­ to demand it all." t's right to be revolutionary - even beginning of the convention, FSP founder ing Native American legend of Raven, Freedom Socialist Managing Editor though sometimes it's no bed of roses. and National Chairperson Clara Fraser who daringly stole Andrea Bauer fol­ That was the conclusion of those at­ credited the FSP's nontraditional program the sun from an old lowed Woo with an Itending the 27-year-old Freedom So­ and methods of collective leadership for man who hoarded it overview of the cialist Party's 1993 convention, held over its survival. for himself in a box. Political Resolution, the July 4th weekend on beautiful Hood "We're an unconventional party," she Raven brought the "Careening Toward Canal in the mountainous U.S. Pacific said, lithe first to boldly proclaim itself sun to the earth's the New World: Northwest. socialist and feminist, and to publicly and people, creating light Revolt and Revolu­ For four heady days, socialists and ra­ actively seek the leadership of lesbians where before only tion in the '90s," an dicals from the u.s., Canada, Guatemala, and gays and people of color. This conven­ darkness had existed. analysis of global and Australia examined the tumultuous tion is to sharpen our tools of unconven­ She likened the affairs which she past five years. Among the topics they tionality - our analyses and practices." task of Raven to that coauthored with FSP discussed: of present-day revo­ National Secretary How did the Soviet shake-up change Global polarization creates both lutionaries, who must Guerry Hoddersen. the climate for world revolution? Who is crisis and opportunity. Asian Ameri­ "rise from inhuman Bauer painted a winning and who is losing in the global can teacher-poet Merle picture of cataclysmic war between those who have and those Woo from San Francisco upheaval following who have not? How can workers create an launched the proceedings the Soviet break-up. international movement to terminate the on Friday morning, July On one hand, \:he imperialist Terminator? 2, with an inspiring wel­ toppling of Stalinist Also up for discussion was how the come to the assembled bureaucracies across intensified political polarization between activists from the labor, Eastern Europe was a left and right played itself out inside the homeless, antiwar, peo­ historic victory for FSP, when a small, demoralized minority ple of color, feminist, and workers, one neces­ split off and began spouting anti-commu­ sary to move world nist tirades to justify abandoning their Alison Thome of Aus­ Andrea Bauer speaks on revolution forward. socialist ideals. tralia and Marcel Hatch the Political Resolution: But because a revo­ The convention itself demonstrated of Canada. Their pre­ "Repression and reac­ lutionary working­ that while this FSP splinter flunked the sentations helped to tion are breeding radi­ class program and test presented by a difficult era, the rest of anchor the conven­ calization and revolt." party have not yet de­ the party grew from the same set of expe- tion's global outlook. veloped in the former USSR and its neighbors, rulers bent on capitalist restoration have taken charge. These developments in Eastern Europe disturbed the worldwide balance of class forces, opening an era of ferocious imperi­ A time for tenacity alist aggression. Paradoxically, liThe horrible success of capitalism carries with it the seeds of fail­ Special session explores challenges of building ure," Bauer said. multi-racial, feminist and Leninist party "Repression and reaction are breeding revolt, resistance and radicalization, as we and lots of convic­ the members of color didn't assert opin­ saw in the Los Angeles rebellion. All this tion, it's still hard to ions, and let the leadership remain unac­ brings the final conflict closer." go against the tide countable. "We suffered their arrogance for long without be­ to remain politically young and carefree." Sick of sell-outs in Australia and ing buoyed up by a The branch faced its weaknesses and . Canada. Organizers of FSP sympathiz­ mass movement. blossomed when the defectors quit. "We ing sections in Australia and Canada en­ "We survived be­ had to grow up fast and become our own dorsed Bauer's perspective in their presen­ cause of our femi­ leaders," said Wong. tations on the resolution. nism and our Trots­ Yolanda Alaniz, Coordinator of the Alison Thorne from Melbourne de­ kyism. We are based National Comrades of Color Caucus of scribed the draconian austerity measures on the most oppres­ FSP and Radical Women, said the faction implemented by the Australia Labor Party sed, least corruptible, experience was a wake-up call. liThe Bay (ALP) and by a new conservative regime in (L. to r.) Yolanda Alaniz, Nellie Wong, Guerry Hoddersen. best layer of fighters Area's fight against the faction has be­ the state of Victoria. - women of color, come the whole party's fight against our Designed to revive the moribund hat are the destructive so­ gays and lesbians, workingdass and poor backward tendendes." economy, the cutbacks and anti-labor laws cietal pressures on radicals white women. And we attract the best Alaniz described this collection of ten­ generated anger and a near-general strike and how can a socialist men of all colors to fight with us." dendes as a closet filled with out-of-date instead. W party resist them? Her advice to FSP members? Build con­ and ill-fitting clothes. Radicals of color The misery caused by the ALP's social­ Three FSPleaders-Guerry Hoddersen, fidence by becoming more educated and have a particular closet stuffed with the democratic program of "management­ Nellie Wong, and Yolanda Alaniz - ex­ conscious Marxists - and by raising stan­ racism, sexism, and homophobia of a labor collaboration" has undermined plored this question on a panel covering dards. II How can we run society if we can't society that tries to convince them they people's faith in the Labor Party, and the Organizational Resolution, a frank conquer our organizational problems?" are second-class. But it can be countered many are ready to look elsewhere for assessment of the state of the party by Nellie Wong, San Frandsco Bay Area with a new wardrobe based on confidence leadership, Thorne concluded. National Secretary Hoddersen. FSP Organizer, told the story of her in an ideology that says, lilt's your destiny Marcel Hatch from Vancouver, British Hoddersen described how the system branch's journey to political maturity. to be the vanguard and we can't make a Columbia motivated stepped-Up interna­ "punches our buttons" by using war, rac­ When the conflict with the anti-lenin­ revolution without you." tional cooperation as an important party ism, fear of women and gays, narcissism ist faction began, it felt awkward because In FSP's faction fight, the comrades of priority, especially to combat the "free and nascent fasdsm to undermine people's the branch had developed a superficially color rose and saved the day, Alaniz said. trade" onslaught against U.S., Canadian, confidence and ability to change. cheerful, non-confrontational subculture. She conduded: "We need a vanguard of and Mexican workers. UBy all rights, the last two decades "As long as the former leaders in the comrades of color and we need a Bolshe­ He cited as an example FSP's recent should have done us in," she said. "Parties branch pulled the strings, we were willing vik vanguard party. It's a duo that cannot success in mobilizing anti-Nazi forces on degenerate. Even with the right program to dance," Wong said. To a large degree, be broken and cannot be beat." [J both sides of the border to confront white to page 9 Dec. 1993-Feb. 1994 soe 5

OVerview The United States Since September 1988, when the The military spending that Freedom Socialist Party adopted its brought a much-needed vitality to last Political Resolution, the world U.S. capitalism before and after has changed dramatically - and at World War II has become a deadly a furious tempo, as one spectacular poison. Past wars and Pentagon event rushes after another. The bloat, combined with Reagan's tax most profound of all these devel­ cuts and a sick economy, are the opments is the fall of the bureau­ reasons for high annual deficits cratized Soviet Union. and the astronomical accumulated When the reign of Stalinist dic­ debt. tators all across the Soviet bloc was Not only does the Pentagon bud­ ended, something else was buried get directly eat up the wealth cre­ along with them: Stalin's pseudo­ ated by workers; the interest pay­ theories of socialism in one coun­ ments on the debt that feeds the try and peaceful coexistence with war machine are the third-largest capitalism. At the same time, item in the federal budget - after Trotsky's theory of Permanent social security and the military it­ Revolution was proven correct. self. Humanity's struggle to win full The election of Bill Clinton as liberation and genuine democracy, president was a cruel joke played Trotsky said, can only be accom­ on explOited and oppressed people. plished through a socialist trans­ Brought to office by an explosive formation. Moreover, this upheaval mass desire for change, Clinton is can not stop with the political over­ now pitching a ragtag package of throw of the bourgeOisie and the familiar economic "cures" designed building of a planned economy; to simultaneously decrease the defi­ the revolution must go on to thor­ cit, stimulate jobs and economic oughly revise every sphere of soci­ growth, increase U.S. competitive­ ety. In the global village where a ness internationally, and keep prof­ sneeze on Wall Street causes a cold its high. He proposes to realize this in Tokyo, socialism can only be fantasy by cutting wages, laying off completed on the international workers, taxing them to death, ax­ level. ing their benefits, and slapping a The USSR could not evade these by Andrea Bauer and Guerry Hoddersen ceiling on healthcare spending. laws. Its revolution had to be ongo­ Liberal dreams of salvation ing and worldwide oritwould even­ This penetrating global overview shows how the through a "peace dividend," de­ tually be overturned. toppling of Stalinism in Eastern Europe confirms Leon rived from Pentagon cuts, are burn­ Tragically, it has been over­ ing off like a morning fog. Clinton turned - for now. The breathtak­ Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Written on the draft dodger is a· Cold War ing political revolution that took hawk who wants no cuts in the CIA off in the 1980s in the USSR and behalf of the Freedom Socialist Party Secretariat, it was or major Pentagon programs. Eastern Europe lacked the lead­ discussed and adopted by the 1993 FSP Convention. The U.S. ruling class needed a ership needed for workers to seize Democrat in the White House to the reins of power directly. There- supervise the selling of this be­ fore, the pro-capitalist bureaucracy trayal to the people. But it can't was able to unleash a counterrevolution resulting in tion was to extend it. They were right. Ultimately, the work. The cost is simply too steep for people to absorb. the dismantling of the world's first workers state, Soviet Union could not escape the global market or Moreover, their hopes for better days have been raised, although Soviet workers remain hostile toward capi­ the high-priced arms race. and their disappointment will inevitably produce talist "market reforms." More than anything else, the demise of the USSR further disenchantment with the status quo. The only The collapse of the Soviet state allowed the U.S. to was caused by its inability over the long term to lasting achievement of Clintonomics will be a radi­ go on a rampage, under cover of the U.N. flag, and to compete economically against world capitalism with­ calized populace. squeeze concessions out of all its opponents. out help coming from the industrially advanced coun­ Revolutionary movements were crushed or sty­ tries in the form of socialist revolutions. Csnsds mied while Western bankers robbed Third World and In its battle for survival against capitalism, the In Canada, anger over skyrocketing unemploy­ former Soviet bloc countries blind. Soviet system was sabotaged by a fat, "rich and com­ ment and government austerity poliCies recently Nicaragua's Sandinista government eventually fell munist" bureaucracy which robbed and mismanaged tumbled Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from victim to the protracted U.S. pressure against it. Iraq the economy. The duel ended in the dissolution of the to nut page was devastated by mostly U.S. firepower. The Haitian USSR when the Soviet people re­ revolution was aborted, Panama and Somalia invaded, belled against 70 years of unfulfilled Jubilant demonstrations like this one celebrated uprisings in EI Salvador and Guatemala derailed, and promises and had their anger the tumbling of the Berlin Wallin 1989. The the generals in the Philippines returned to power. turned against them by a counter­ destruction of the wall symbolized workers' But the very hegemony that the U.S. appeared to revolutionary partnership of Stal­ triumph over repressive Stalinist regimes establish during this period is turning into its own inist apparatchiks and Harvard eco­ all across Eastern Europe. nemesis. The magnitude of the imperialist economic nomic advisers. crisis forces the bosses to take the kind of desperate The irony is that the forces of measures at home and abroad that inevitably provoke imperialism are in such bad shape an equal and opposite reaction on the part of workers that they have been unable to fully and the oppressed. take advantage of this huge rever­ Already, we can see sporadic flash points of revolt sal of fortune. The richest and most in the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion against police productive country, the U.S., has brutality, poverty, and racism; in street protests and been mired in a recession for al­ parliamentary opposition to Yeltsin; in the anti-aus­ most a decade. Its federal debt, terity strikes in Australia; in the anti-West hatred which stands at $4.1 trillion, has expressed in Islamic fundamentalism; in the grass­ doubled since the 1988 FSP con­ roots resistance to fascist resurgence in the U.S., Canada, vention. There will be no Marshall and Europe; and in the tenacity of indomitable strug­ Plan to reinstitute capitalism in gles like the Intifada and the anti-apartheid campaign. the East. The ruling class has no way out, not even a tempo­ Across the board, the bourgeoi­ rary one, without relying on violent repression; but sie turn their problems into our this repression is the whip that impels the global problems. working class - no longer restrained by the hold of On the global scale, the imperi­ Stalinism - to fight for a new world. alists try to improve their positions Capitalism and its institutions are decrepit and through intensified rivalry, espe­ Stalinism and its organizations are in chaos. The cially trade wars, and through in­ disruption of class equilibrium brought about by the creased exploitation of the Third fracturing of the middle caste is producing traumatic World. aftershocks - but it is also bringing the final conflict On the domestic front, the re­ closer. sults of capitalist frenzy are the It's time for Trotskyism to shine. With Trotsky's same no matter the country: un­ theories validated, it's now up to us as his political employment, homelessness, price heirs to validate his hope and trust in future revolution­ hikes, wage cuts, inflation, union­ ary generations. busting. They add up to a horrific fall in the overall standard of living for workers and the poor every­ Global Economy on a where and to absolute misery for Slippery Slope to Hell those hurt the worst - women, Lenin, Trotsky, and the early Bolsheviks all recog­ children, the elderly, the sick, im­ nized that the only way to secure the Russian Revolu- migrants, and people of color.

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT-l 6 December 1993-February 1994 Freedom Soc power, created splinter parties out of both the Tories and start getting itself back on its feet, Harvard economist and power bases and thus over basic questions of strategy the liberals, and installed the New Democratic Party one-time workers-state-conversion guru Jeffrey Sachs tempo; the governments are highly dysfunctional (Canada's Labor Party) in three provinces. admitted to having no idea whatsoever. unstable. And most importantly, the workers are But once elected, the NDP managed to quickly alien­ Their crisis of confidence is essentially good news for over the course their officials are on, as strikes, <1elnonst:ra~ ate much of its constituency by implementing anti-labor the working dass - but at the same time, it raises the tions, and polls all show. [After this document policies - especially in Ontario, where a new bill called stakes, throwing open the possibility of a tum on their drafted, Polish workers spectacularly expressed H the "Social Contract Act gives the government the part to desperate measures such as inter-imperialist war mountingdisgustwithLech Walesa, theCatholic r ' .... _,... authority to deal with provincial financial crises by or fascism. and the whole new stratum of capitalist enablers imposing a three-year freeze on wages and benefits, voting in a new parliamentary majority composed among other things. Workers there are already stagger­ former Communist Party members and SO(:laJ-Ot~m()i ing under a four-billion-dollar cut in government pro­ OVerturn of the Workers States: cratic types. -Ed.] grams and a two-billion-dollar tax increase introduced in Highly Transitional State of Affairs The unsettled, pell-mell nature of the new the May 1993 budget. In earlier political resolutions, we could assert that certainly comes through dearly in the perilous The NDP will have to change course or be crushed in capitalist relations had never been reinstituted in a heads of state - first Gorbachev, now Yeltsin- a voter stampede. country where they had been abolished. This is no longer Canadian workers are particularly disgusted with the true. "free trade" agreement their government signed with the Once launched, U.S. five years ago. The deal is a precursor to NAYfA, the revolution will turn North American Free Trade Agreement among the U.S., into counterrevolu­ Canada, and Mexico that will sweeten the pot for big tion if not carried business by lowering working, living, and environmen­ through completely. tal conditions in all three· countries. More than 1.6 In the USSR, elements million Canadian jobs have been lost already as a result of the ruling elite were of "free trade." Ironically, many ofthese jobs wentto the able to transform the U.S., where labor is cheaper. political revolution, The stormy and unstable political weather in Canada which lacked the lead­ is bound to translate into growing rumblings in the ership required to go highly dass-conscious union movement. all the way, into a so­ cial revolution - i.e., Australia the partial repriva­ like Canada, Australia is enmeshed in a prolonged tization of the recession. But presiding over its difficulties is a Labor economy. Party that has ruled nationally since 1983 and has at­ tempted to "manage" the crisis by using the standard Determining capitalist menu of options: cutting back jobs, selling off the nature the public sector, shredding benefits, attacking welfare ofthcstate services, eliminating hard-won rights and protections, A trio of factors and taming unions. must be examined to­ Because of these betrayals, the Labor Party was tossed getherin order to come out of office in the state of Victoria in 1992 and seriously to a condusion about threatened on the national level in 1993. the nature of the vari­ The new conservative regime in Victoria was elected ous states which have because it promised to fix the economic mess without replaced the Soviet making anyone worse off. Instead, it brought the process Union. These are: the of atomizing workers and privatizing industry and ser­ kind of property rela­ vices to an agonizing pitch. It is even getting financial tions that prevail; the handouts from the Federal Labor Government to help character of the state cover the costs of sacking its employees! The rest of the apparatus - whose country is just two steps behind Victoria in implement­ interest it serves; and ing the same rapacious policies. the program and goals The positive side of this horror show is that austerity of the leadership.* will impel Australian workers to break with the dass­ In the first area, that collaborationist policy of "consensus" among labor, busi­ of property relations, ness, and government foisted on them during the 1980s a workers state requires by the treacherous Labor Party bureaucracy. (The Clinton three things: the nationalization of the means of produc­ administration is studying this policy in hopes of trying tion (although this may not take place immediately); it in the U.S.) centralized planning; and a monopoly of foreign trade. During the thrilling near-general strike in Victoria in In the former USSR, the monopoly of foreign trade November 1992, workers saw the potential of their col­ and centralized planning are gone. The reprivatization of lective power. The labor movement misleadership will land, industry, banking, housing, and services is unfold­ not be able to dam up workingdass determination for ing at different rates in the various republics, but the long. In time, that November strike will prove to have direction in which the countries are going is the been the early splash of a drenching strike wave. reimposition of capitalism. Mixed economies prevail. tain on the levers of control. Yeltsin has no ..... ,.;;ulla. The state apparatus - government, army, legal sys­ support; he is viewed by all as a foreign stooge. He Bourgeois' ban/auptcy tem, etc. - has placed itself explicitly at the service of the survived his numerous confrontations with the KUSSlalll The capitalists are out of alternatives - and they know capitalists. In The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky pointed parliament only because the common people fear it! As an example, when asked recently how Russia could out that a bourgeois restoration "would probably have to control by parliament would mean a complete rp'Tpr""~,. dean out fewer people" than would to Stalinism, and because they see no other viable a political revolution aimed at in­ native. stitutingworkers' democracy. The Yeltsin's attempt as of this writing to continue state apparatus has already been ming through capitalist reform by consolidating heavily "bourgeoisified" for many Bonapartist, above-it-all form of presidential rule is decades; Trotsky predicted that the act of sheer desperation. This ploy cannot work for rebirth of capitalism "would find if at all - but what will happen next is yet to no small number of ready servants determined. among the present ... privileged The current mixed-economy states that have I,.;;~,.a'.. <:" upper cirdes," and so it has. the workers state are exceedingly transitional, A return to capitalism is the tional, tentative, fragile, and reversible. Their nv'''r''.'...... definite goal of the various regimes. are breeding resistance with every step toward they take. The worsening conditions are affecting A capitalist house female sex first and hardest, as always, and are spa built on sand a rapidly growing feminist movement. But the comeback of capitalism In the former workers states of Eastern Europe, could hardly be on shakier ground. situation is much the same, although in several Capitalists of other nations are the encroachment of capitalism is decidedly more unwilling to invest. The ex-Soviet vanced than in the ex-Soviet Union. ruling regimes are hopelessly di­ The workers state in China is not dismantled, but it ' vided within themselves by con­ in jeopardy. The combination of monolithic Ull'''-I-I,<1. flicting material interests and control and the gradual injections of capitalist "H',,,"c,,ro. into what is now the world's third-largest economy lead from a primarily nationalized economy to a * For greater elaboration of this pOint, back of the profit system ushered in by the rn"nf'nT'. read "The Nature of the Nicaraguan State," by Stephen Durham and Susan Williams, Stalinist ruling stratum. But the would-be-capitalist M.D., published in the Freedom Socialist reaucracy will first have to contend with resistance VoL 12 No.3. China's revolutionary students and workers, who the depth of their commitment to both democracy socialism during the Tiananmen Square rebellion. (Above) Oct. '91: public workers In Toronto, The working classes of Eastern Europe and the Canada on strike against wage controls, cut­ USSR are already mobilizing against the specific backs, and privatization. (Left) A near-general and injustices caused by the reintroduction of ,-a~J1La111 strike rocked Australia's state of Victoria In ism. In the heat of these fights, and with the Nov. '92. Almost a million worken walked out radicals internationally, they will adopt the Of()1!"f;am to protest austerity and anti-labor legislation. forge the leadership necessary to transform rage

2-SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ...-______~ ___~ ___ ~'______'__. __ .~~~._-_-. o.;;-.c;r-~··~-~==--=·=--~-~.--=--~.=----=~=-=-===-"'_-~~==-=-.-=~=.-"'_-=-=~======____ ..",..,,==""""''''''''''~~''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''"...... ='''''

December 1993- 1994 7

power. The decisive battles between labor and capital (Top right) Young Cubanos greeting a Pastors over the reimposition of the profit system are still ahead. for Peace aid caravan show resolve to beat the blockade. (Below) Anti-U.S. demonstrators In Jordan during the 1991 Gulf War express Third Imperialism Loses its Main Prop, World rage against the "new world order." the Stalinist Middle Caste For more than 60 years, the entrenched Stalinist middle caste helped delay the final conflict between the Stalinist bureaucrats in the mass movements who seemed exploiters and the exploited by acting as a brake on both. to straddle class lines for years are more and more While shielding the workers states somewhat from cap­ revealed as reactionaries. Des­ italism and providing limited material support to anti­ perate to sell people on the imperialist revolts with one hand, it checked the growth system, they are spearhead­ of socialist revolution with the other. Now, with that ingthe attack on unrepentant caste dislodged, excruciating upheaval is the order of the revolutionaries. day. Trotskyists too, like the Germany is a case in point. Five years ago, its econo­ renegade FSP faction, have mies, East and West, were among the healthiest in their buckled under to the heavy anti-communist barrage, re­ nouncing the need for the vanguard party, and backing off from class struggle. But the destination many of these defectors are making ruling class has no way out for, the social democracy, is the global crisis. In resorting itself in deep trouble. Facing the same economic crisis as to violent repression, it impels the rest of the capitalist com­ munity, social-democratic workers-no longer held in regimes have proven them­ check by the Stalinist bureau­ selves just as unable to patch up a nearly dead system, and cracy and its pervasive influ­ governmental heads are roll­ ing all across Europe and Aus­ ence-tofightall the harder tralia. The ruling French So­ cialists are the latest group to for a new world. take a beating. strated, all the Soviet heroism imaginable can only tri­ On the other hand, the middle-caste social democrats umph in the end if it is matched by revolutions in the and Stalinists are hardly out of the picture. They will West - above all, in the U.S. continue to be the primary dampeners of workingclass Revolt in the nerve center and stronghold of imperi­ militance until an authentically revolutionary alterna­ alism is on the agenda. People are reaching a breaking tive leadership establishes itself strongly enough to sweep point. The immense revolutionary response that is to them out of the way. And don't be surprised if what come is foreshadowed in dramatic upheavals like the L.A. remains of the CP suddenly makes a hard left turn. Rebellion and in the swelling of support for electoral Opportunism is its only consistent doctrine. alternatives to the twin representatives of big business. But the effect of the dispatching of the Stalinist re­ Race, sex, and sexuality issues are now constantly in the gimes across Eastern Europe and the USSR, which stripped headlines. In the labor movement, there's a feeling of from Stalinism its political and material power base and "it's our turn" and a marked increase in enthusiasm for the prestige it accrued as the guardian of the October forming an independent labor party. Revolution, can not be underestimated. The world proletariat today confronts a pre-revolu­ tionary situation similar to that confronting it after Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize World War II,with one crucial difference. In promising This new mood of combativeness means huge oppor­ earlier periods, the Stalinist apparatus collaborated with tunities for the FSP. the bourgeoisie to consolidate capitalism through such Our party program represents and champions the maneuvers as supporting the Democrats and thus block­ most exploited and most radical members of the working ing the emergence of a U.S. labor party. The suffocating class - women, people of color, Jews, national and grip of this counterrevolutionary caste has now been ethnic minorities, immigrants, lesbians and gays, elders, broken. youth, and the disabled. Because of our program, we are able to attract the kind of leaders and members the struggle demands. Our understanding of our class - Soviet and U.S. Workers: based on history, theory, personal experience, and be­ In Their Hands Is Placed the Power longing - is what makes us optimistic, despite the In the developing climactic face-off between capital obstacles. and labor, the working classes of the former Soviet Union We passed an enormous test when we were required to I respective spheres. Today Germany is a shambles, eco­ and the United States hold the keys to victory. put our Revolutionary Integration principles into prac­ nomically and socially. Soviet workers are the ones who made the first socialist tice in dealing first with racist incidents in the party and Elsewhere the four horsemen of the apocalypse - revolution and defended it at enormous cost through then with the attempts of the Bay Area faction to ma­ conquest, war, famine, and death - patrol the planet. decades of hardship and war. They are beginning to form nipulate the race issues to foment an anti-Leninist insur­ Starvation stalks Africa and shadows Eastern Europe. organizations to protect the gains of that revolution from rection. Our experience was similar in many ways to the Russian sailors join babies all over the world in succumb­ the new market economy. They are a class that sets the split over the Woman Question in FSP's formative years. ing to malnutrition. Bosnia and Herzegovina, until re- direction of history. At stake in both fights was our adherence to an I centlyone of the most successfully multinational en­ But as the past five years have graphically demon- to..,,,... claves anywhere, shatters. The rise of reactionary nationalism in the former workers states, for instance in what used to be Yugosla­ via, is a direct result of capitalist restoration. Capitalism is cutthroat, and it is organized on a national basis. Its ETHE ,. reinstatement produces instant fracturing, competition, ItlD and hostility along national lines. Appearing to lord it over all this chaos is the U.S., but FSP DOCUMENTS ON LEADERSHIP AND REVOLUTION appearances can be deceiving. Playing world cop is expensive - and politically dangerous. The January A. Towards the '90s: Approaching the Final Conflict 1993 bombing of Iraq provoked splits in the pro-U.S. by Guerry Hoddersen and Clara Fraser. 1988 world overview. $1.50 coalition Bush stitched together during the 1991 Gulf War - cracks that appeared because the workers and B. Careening Toward the New World: Revolt and Counterrevolution in the '90s common people of the Arab world are outraged by U.S. by Andrea Bauer and Guerry Hoddersen. $.50 arrogance. And in the States, waging foreign wars always stirs opposition that runs the risk of developing into an C. Renegades from Leninism Wallow in Cliches anti-capitalist mass movement. by Doug Barnes and Merle Woo. Down-to-earth defense of the vanguard party. $.75 Attack engenders counter-attack. D. Revolutionary Integration Yesterday and Today by Tom Boot. Analysis of the role of Black leadership in 0 R ft ER ... 0 ' Erosion of Opportunist Layer workingclass emancipation. $.50 .,. ~ W" Brings Labor and Capital 1------, I Enclosed is $ for ~ B~_ C~~ D~_ E~_ (please indicate quantity of eaCh). I Closer to Showdown I Add $1.00 for shipping first document plus $.25 for each additional Item. I The sidelining of the Stalinists has turned our era's signature vacuum of leadership into a chasm. I Name Address Phone I Ex-followers of Moscow, like members of the Commu- I ~~ I , nist Party of the United States, have by and large internal­ ized the anti-Leninism so much in vogue at the moment I City State Zip Country I and are either dropping out or moving right, with many I Return check or money order to: I heading for the camp of the official social democracy. L ___ ~~m~~tN~F~ayHa~o18Ralnler~.~uth,~~.,~~118.~~~~. ___ ~

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT-3 8 Freedom SOCialist XXX December 1993-February 1994 ideology and organizational practice that Fighting Nazis will remain an FSP priority. Below, stepped to the forefront in creating a U.s./ seek to advance class unity by battling every neighborhood children pose after a 1989 rally orga­ Canada West Coast movement against the form and manifestation of chauvinism and nized by United Front Against Fascism to Nazis and white supremadsts that has at- by promoting, not suppressing, the leader­ protest the Populist Party. tracted support from unions and has the ship of the oppressed. Our ability to lead the capability to spread far and wide with proper drive to overcome intra-class divisions is attention. Through NAFTA and other such crudal at a time of high unemployment, predatory schemes, the capitalists will give dwindling resources, and heavily concen­ FSP many more opportunities to put interna­ trated rulingclass efforts to pit group against tionalism into practice in the immediate group. future. Much is uncertain about the immediate Now to add new tasks to our ongoing future. The dangers facing humanity are im­ strategies. mense: totalitarianism, genodde, mass star­ vation, nuclear destruction, environmental Dmndlng lind expllllning socllliism holocaust. More acutely than ever before, First, we must above all defend socialism the question of our time is posed: backward and educate about Leninism and Trotsky­ to a post-modem barbarism, or forward to ism. This entails the following: sodalism? • Politically defeating the San Frandsco But hopeful signs are everywhere too. The ~ Bay Area faction of anti-Leninist ex-mem­ demolishing of the Stalinist monolith is a : bers, a job which is both a necessity for workingclass advance of epic proportions, ~ ideological self-defense and a chance to teach one earth-shaking step in the uninterrupted Bolshevism. Critical to this is continued sup­ and uninterruptible process of the world's port from the party as a whole to the San citizens seizing control of their own destiny. Francisco Bay Area comrades, who shoulder It is the latest demonstration that humanity the lion's share of this work. has never yet failed to rise to the challenges • Conducting a literary and multi-media facing it. there is much more we can do. campaign consisting of letters to the editor, articles, Our responsibilities as the cadre of the revolution­ The idea of a labor party is receiving greater respect op-ed pieces, and appearances on radio and TV talk ary party are immense. But, as our 1982 Political in the U.S. since the Democrats are so visibly selling shows defending Marxism and the Russian Revolu­ Resolution noted, "Great vanguards tend to be created out workers. Now is the time to switch from merely tion and patiently explaining why revolutionary lead­ by great events." The laws of history and economics educating about the issue to pressing for its achieve­ ership is necessary for the survival of our class. are on our Side, and the rewards for carrying out our ment. An anti-capitalist third party is the connecting • Coming to the aid of· the remaining workers duties faithfully will be incalculable. vehicle which can bring together all the movements states, especially Cuba, where direct U.S. assault may to fight side by side. The potential to recruit workers be imminent, in every way we can. to socialist ideas in the process of creating such a party • Intervening on ~he side of the working class in Strategies and Tasks is very high. events in Eastern Europe and the former USSR - In setting our priorities for the coming period, we On the electoral front, the California and Seattle which, in order to be effective, means constant study stand firmly and proudly on our successes in imple­ FSP election campaigns showed that workers are ready of unfolding developments there. menting the strategies set forward in the 1988 Political for our ideas. Ross Perot, Bo Gritz, and other neo­ • Giving our sister organization Radical Women all Resolution. fasdst candidates have proven that if there is no left possible and necessary help in publicizing the find­ Several of these remain at the top of our list. electoral alternative, voters will go right. They want ings of its supremely important 1993 tour of the change, one way or another. Let's make sure they have former Soviet bloc. Sparking electoral electricity a radical option! Building a U.S. labor party and running our own Winning fru speech candidates are still key, because the prospects for what Forging united fronts for the worlcJng pras we can accomplish in these areas have broadened Also still part of our urgent business is continuing Secondly, winning the Sandy Nelson case is top tremendously. Our accomplishments indicate that to form united fronts against reaction. Here FSP has priority. Comrade Sandy's battle with the Morning News Tribune, which transferred her out of her report­ ing position as punishment for her political activities, is a critical one for all workers everywhere. At issue is About the Authors whether journalists in the United States will become Andrea Bauer got her start with the alterna­ Guerry Hodderseo, National Secretary of complete slaves to the management line, unable to do tive press as a writer for the Post-Amerikan in the Freedom Socialist Party, says she was "born with anything but crank out the lies provided by the Bloomington-Normal, IllinOis, where she was also an allergy to capitalism." Coming from a Southern establishment, or whether they will be dtizen-jour­ involved with the feminist, lesbian/gay and prison­ family, she participated in the civil rights struggle at nalists who knowledgeably investigate and report the ers' rights movements. Since coming to the Pacific an early age. Her education as a revolutionary truth so that readers can act to change the status quo. Northwest and meeting up with the Freedom So­ continued in the Berkeley student arena, the mass' cialist Party, Bauer has applied her intellect and protests against the war in Vietnam, the women's Recruiting new lellckrs talents to analyzing and writing on world affairs, liberation upsurge, and the labor movement. Finally, the party must take advantage of the his­ studying and teaching Marx's Capital, and man­ Hoddersen is proud to be a '60s radical who never toric openings for Trotskyism and expand our mem­ aging the Freedom Socialist newspaper. She has gave up the fight. She was a defendant and legal bership through an international recruitment drive written extenSively on issues surrounding the col­ strategist in the Freeway Hall Case - a ground­ complete with goals, charts, a bulletin, and a live-wire lapse of Stalinism in the former Soviet Union. breaking 1980s defense of the right to be radical - coordinator. Such a campaign will tum the party Amidst writing, studying, organizing and plan­ and is a founder of United Front Against Fascism outward toward other activists who are being radical­ ning, Bauer always finds time to watch Star Trek, and a recognized leader in the anti-Nazi struggle. ized by the times. Their dynamism will propel the which she claims provides insights into her main Hoddersen steers the national FSP with the wisdom party forward to fulfill its role as the leadership of the goal of creating a better future for humanity and of a seasoned organizer and a deep commitment to coming revolution. other inhabitants of the universe. principles and people. jAdelante companeros y companeras! Tomorrow is ours! [J TheFreetiom . SoeiaBst: . dieal alternatIve Melbourne' S17lAL1A VIC 305 . ptu.. . Box 266 W. 5. Phone/FAX 0'3' est BrunSWick b::he gift deparUDent! -3B6-5065. ' New York City. ~EW YORK Vancouver: 304-~A New York C1 . Union Square E U and a friend­ FAX 212_49 1tY,4NY 10003. 21267·'7 Rm . 907, Vancouver BC V6 5 Beach Ave - 634. - -7002. Phone/FAX 60'4 G 1Y5.' rr;::~~ \~U::h for 4issUes! -6B8-5195. POrtland: North OREGON NW Everett RWest Service Cent Phonea------• • • 503-228-3ci90~J~1, Portland, 8k ~~~~ amaL__ ------,(~PI .. e... SeP.prMIMt))------~ ___------503-223-2390 9. Your n (lty- Los Angeles:~ffORNIA ~ . POrt Angeles: 5'1t~/NGrON Address------country'------CA 9005':' St, #204, Los th ~e2'es, ;,~ 98362. 206-452_7S/4 , Port Anse/es W," Zlp------••••• S 13-368-1367 -413-1350 Seattle: Nat! . , n an Francisco. V, . 409 M anal Office Bus . StatL •••••••• • • • • • • Valencia St a/enCia Hall 523-A Sa n WA 98~~~arZoAve. SO~th #~01s~ Center, ••••••••••••• co • • • • • • • PhonL------'415-864-1S278 :;::;Cis , CA 94110 FAX 206-68· 6-682-0990 ,eattle, '415-864-0778 . 5 2-8120· ' name__ ------

4-SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ------===

December 1993-February 1994 Freedom SOcialist 9

Noble, a member of the FSP Secretariat, Joint leadership is the key to workshops, such as ones on finances, leaf­ explained how this minority had tried to party survival. The convention strik­ let design, and PR, and strategizing was emphasized in mass movement work­ eee foist a subtly racist, female-chauvinist cul­ ingly illustrated how the faction fight Convention ture and a Stalinist-style top-down leader­ pushed the whole party to new levels of shops. ship mode on the Bay Area branch. consciousness, seriousness, and commit­ • The evenings featured branch cul­ from page 4 "Desperate to keep the local in a hold­ ment. tural performances ranging from comedy supremacists in Canada and Washington ing pattern so they could coast, this un­ • An appreciative comment on the in­ skits to poetry. state. principled clique refused to carry out one dispensable role of feminist men in the • Plans for a $50,000 Freedom Socialist In this way, the FSP can present an of the main responsibilities of leaders in a party sparked a special meeting organized Fund Drive were enthusiastically approved, alternative to the defeatism of ultra-leftists Bolshevik party - to and $16,177 in pledges and on-the-spot and anarchists, on the one hand, and the train new leaders, in contributions was raised for the FS at a class-collaboration politics of Stalinists, particular comrades ~ Sunday night banquet paying tribute to social democrats, and demoralized of color," Noble said. 1 the party's publications. Trotskyists on the other, Hatch said. Instead they cre­ '~ • The National Comrades of Color Cau­ ated a leadership ~ cus followed up its inspirational participa- Big picture shows that U.S. revo­ mystique. Comrades tion during the weekend with a post­ lution is central. Saturday's session of color, the major­ convention NCCC meeting. There they began with hard-hitting eyewitness re­ ity of the branch, discussed the ongoing faction fight, took ports from two of the world's hottest class­ were pigeonholed as stock of the caucus' strengthened iden­ war zones: the former Soviet countries artistic and sponta­ tity, heard reports on the struggles of in­ and Cuba. neous and consid­ digenous people in Canada and Australia, The first was presented by Adrienne ered poor material for and evaluated the party's work in U.S. Weller and Su Docekal, who represented organizers. Male people of color movements. FSP's sister affiliate, Radical Women, on a comrades were ex­ recently concluded nine-week tour of East­ pected to be second­ Proud to be Red. Attendees put it all ern Europe and Russia. The second was by class workhorses. together in a session in which they de­ Freedom Socialist photojournalist Doug As the clique dis­ cided on where to concentrate their main Barnes, who visited Cuba in January 1993 tanced themselves Impressed by the convention, the attendees above were energies in the time ahead: education about for three weeks. from the member- among those who pledged to work with FSP on all fronts. SOcialism, defense of the party against Both accounts illustrated how desper­ ship, they began to anti-Leninists, and recruitment; internal atelythe fate of humanity ultimately rides pit themselves against other national lead­ by the male comrades to talk about the immersion in Marxist theory; running so­ on revolution in the U.S. ers, hoping to escape correction and turn challenges they face as role models and cialist candidates and building a U .S.labor Docekal and Weller met with women the party into a loose federation where leaders and to discuss how to recruit more party; forging united fronts against reac­ they could "do their men to the organization. tion; and winning journalist Sandy own thing." Their • The Bay Area FSP comrades, who took Nelson's free-speech case (please see story flight from Marxism over the leadership posts that were aban­ on page three). "We're an unconventional party - accelerated when doned by the faction, contributed Convention-goers felt overall that FSP one of them came speeches, poetry, humor, and heartfelt is passing the test that the '90s poses - the the first to boldly proclaim itself into two large inher­ personal testimony to the four days of test of rerpaining true to its roots and itances. intellectual exploration. reason for existence and of continuing to sodalist and feminist, and to publicly Their growing • Skills were strengthened in practical wear its revolutionary politics boldly on hatred for long­ its sleeve. C and actively seek the leadership of established party lesbians and gays and people of color. practices and leader­ ship norms came to a This convention is to sharpen our tools head in a dispute over of unconventionality - our analyses how FSP should BeanSBeR- handle two instances A Poetic trlb t ICe Be ~Ose and our practices. " of racial insensitivity Su DOCekal : travelers Do by two white party' :J~e~orld S Too leaders. The national b ne Weller ug Barnes -Clara Fraser leadership, themem­ Y Nellie Wong , FSPfounder bers of color affected, and the National Bananas for sale Comrades of Color on a street in the forefront of rescuing socialism from Caucus all favored a problem-solving ap­ An old corner the rubble of Stalinism. (Please see article proach, which took the form of a highly a bottle:~~an hOlds up on page 12.) These women were overjoyed successful weekend-long race relations for a few rUb/~mPoo to know that U.S. socialist feminists exist! seminar. CUbanos get tw Weller and Docekal found that in the When the three Bay Area leaders con­ 0 former Soviet bloc, Marxists and feminists tinued to try to foster witchhunting hyste­ Young boys & . rOl/s daily face a double Challenge: organizing against ria over the incidents, and began to at­ outSide a d girls hang the reimposition of capitalism, promoted tempt to recruit other FSP and RW mem­ Gay Cub usty bus by Harvard School of Business advisers, bers to their aggrieved but ill-defined po­ conn a~os while simultaneously rebuilding a com­ sition, it was apparent that something the" <;>t belIeve We/ler, May Da ' munist movement to fill a vacuum of more was wrong. W e IS a SOCialist t " Y 93, M06cOW leadership created by decades of repres­ The rest of the Bay Area branch decided omen in the Balkemln/st Chicana sive bureaucratic rule. they'd had it with the faction's shenani­ cannot bel' ans Cuba, too, is fighting for its survival. gans. They told the trio to bring their that tho leve I ,ere are Us Devastated by a U.S. embargo that has underlying disagreements into the open Whoso t . ,wome denied it access to world markets, the and conduct a rational political debate. CUban~ hey are both so~/evo/utionaries proud Cuban revolution is battered and Instead, the faction quit. increasingly desperate. Barnes described Soon after, the ex-members began cir­ of red, s~~~h Wear their C~~~& feminist the international campaign to break the culating papers attacking the FSP and SUch a May D~ o~r emissary Dou uevara scarves blockade and called for expanded work­ Leninism. Leninism is the concept that With Su & Ad' Y In Moscow g ers' democracy within Cuba as a key anti­ for workers to defeat a well-organized and the FreedOmr~nn,e haWking dote to imperialist coercion. armed ruling class, they need a theoreti­ SaYing Who During discussion, comrades spoke cally developed, disciplined, and demo­ th:~/alist Intemationalis ' Radical paSSionately on the need to defend Cuba cratic leadership organization of their m S~ and and support the anti-capitalist, feminist, own. Potatoes and b IS nCe and be Women are lesbian and gay, and anti-fascist move­ The question of whether such a party AR read ans, ments in the former Soviet bloc. is necessary was at the heart of the A B/~:an/,~an suPpo~~~~oses ~oo s faction fight. in the u,;lIn/ ter sayS We ne~~~/~nary Integration Anti-Leninism comes home. Sat­ The renegades wanted a comfy dis­ We are the eVOlution urday afternoon and Sunday were devoted cussion salon where they were allowed ~' colors of to discussion about the impact of today's to be irresponsible. But the overwhelm- IVa, World t Change Viva So ' ,rave/ers! world on the party. (Please see companion ing party majority insisted on an au­ , C/allsm With article on page four for Sunday highligh ts.) thentic vanguard organization, one Saturday featured a panel presentation that is feminist and revolutionary­ Written at FSP comPuters and ty , JUly 3, 1993 ConVention, Aid peWnters/ about the anti-Leninist faction fight waged integrationist and built upon the col­ erbrook Inn U. , nion, WaSh' by three former party leaders from the San laborative and accountable leader­ mgton Francisco Bay Area. ship of women and men of all col­ Respected Jewish labor leader Henry ors, especially the most oppressed.

The rapes can only be ended by de­ stroying the system which depends on Capitalism far from invincible. substance every day. ... East Europe war and the subjugation of women. How? The fall of the Stalinized regimes in East­ Women's experience as workers, com­ Through a feminist, anti-nationalist move­ ern Europe gave private profiteers an open­ bined with their newly impoverished con­ from poge 12 ment that challenges all of the pro-capi­ ing to attempt a comeback in Eastern dition, together create a vast, region-wide exploit the issue of wartime rape to whip talist regimes involved. Europe - but their days are numbered as carpet of dry twigs just waiting for the up support for U.S. bombing of Serbia. well. The people who rebelled and brought match of feminism. Once that fire starts, it Rightwing Croatian women's groups who Germany. Skinheads firebombed a down Stalinism out of desperation for a will leap blazing from country to country, back her are attempting to censor antiwar Kurdish restaurantthree blocks from where better life are now finding that the profit sweeping aside all opposition and rekin­ feminists from Serbia and Croatia. we stayed, killing a woman and child. system is completely unable to deliver. dling hope for peace and freedom all over Radical Women joins with Women in Forty-eight hours later, we were marching The women and men of Eastern Europe the globe. Black in demanding: in a protest of thousands organized by our we met agreed with us: an international We came home more determined than • Lift the U.S. embargo! It helps hosts, the Anti-Racist Initiative. Of all the socialist feminist movement is the an­ ever to do our part: to help spark the fires Milosevic politically and injures the Ser­ countries we visited, Germany is where swer to the capitalist rip-off that is emp­ ofresistance in the U.S., center of counter­ bian people. the coming choice between socialism and tying the pockets ofworkers - and to the revolution, in order to give socialist peace • No U.S./U.N. military intervention! fascism is seen most clearly. threat Of fascism that takes on more a chance. C 10 Freedom SOcialist

Editorials Colonialism tries facelift in Somalia and Haiti A REPUBUCAN PRESIDENT sent the Marines to Somalia on a "humanitarian" mission. The soldiers, after accomplishing their good deeds, were supposed to be home for the holidays. The U.N., too, was cast in a new warm and fuzzy role as super-Boy Scout to the world. More than a year has passed. The U.S. has a different, Demo­ cratic president. But the armies of the U.S. and the U.N. are stfll in Somalia - and they're acting like armies. Instead of staving off starvation, they're producing corpses. The U.S./U.N. went in under cover of the racist-paternalist mission of "saving a failed state." The reality is even worse. The goal is to disarm Somalia so that it can not resist the return of colOnialism, as capitalist predators seek to reclaim past hunting grounds. Until the ouster of its brutal pet dictator, Siad Barre, in 1991, the U.S. employed political influence and military bases in Somalia against Arab and African revolution. Now it wants its assets back.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S CLAIM to be the good guy is no more credible in Haiti. In Somalia, the U.S. promoted it­ self as replenishing the stock of food; in Haiti, one of the most viciously oppressed countries in the West, it claims to be sup­ Dateline Australia plying democracy. How? Hypothetically, by taking sides with democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In reality, the U.S. continues to make unsavory deals with a nest of cocaine-traf­ ficking military vipers who are themselves responsible for oust­ Inmates and activists mobilize ing Aristide. Not surprisingly, these General Docs turn out to have long, snuggly, and profitable relationships with the CIA. to save Fairlea women's prison THE TIGER CAN'T CHANGE its stripes. Neither can im­ perialism. The best favor the world's workers can do for the BY ALISON THORNE offenses, and defaulting on court coming a multinational busi­ people of Somalia and Haiti is to demand U.S. and U.N. out! C fines. In VictOria, a woman is 40 ness. Australia's first money­ ince July 25, feminists times more likely than a man to making dungeon, Borallon, and prisoners' rights ac­ serve time for failure to pay a opened in Queensland in 1992. tiVists have held a round­ fine! Women are often denied a Borallon is run by the U.S.-based No heroes at the top Sthe-clock vigil outside Community Based Order as an Corrections Corporation of Fairlea Women's Prison, defy­ alternative to jail because child­ America, which is developing ing even Melbourne's hostile care responsibilities and lack of private prisons around the world in Russian crisis mid-year winter weather. They job skills make it impossible for and is currently competing for BORIS YELTSIN'S SHOWDOWN with parliament elimi­ demand that the facility, which them to comply with CBO rules. the franchise for about 20 of nated the lesser roadblock to his plan to put privatization on a is the only women's prison in Few women are in prison for them in Britain. fast track. The main obstacle - Russia's working class - re­ the city, be kept open. crimes of violence. When they Free-enterprise prisons are mains. In order to cut costs, the Vic­ are, these "crimes" are usually wildly unaccountable. EnOt­ The Western media cast the battle as one between "Yeltsin torian State Government plans acts of self-defence against re­ mous quantities of data about the democrat" and "communist hard-liners." In fact, it was a to shut Fairlea and transfer the peated attacks by partners. Borallon, for example, includ­ power struggle not over whether nationalized property should women to male prisons, thrust­ ing information about policies be privatized, but at what pace - and how the booty would be ing Fairlea's sixty prisoners into Fairlea: lesser of two and procedures, are considered divided. Yeltsin wants to invite the big capitalists to an imme­ unbearable conditions. The in­ evils. Most Fairlea inmates have commercially sensitive and thus diate fire sale; his antagonists want to transform state indus­ mates are seeking an injunction backgrounds of poverty, sexual covered by secrecy proviSions! tries into their own personal cash cows. against the closure through and physical abuse, and drug Private jailhouses also have a Yeltsin's coup gave him an opening to steamroll his real en­ Victoria's Equal Opportunity addiction. Victorian prisons pro­ financial incentive to lobby for emy: his budding workingclass opposition. While bloody Boris Board. But because EO law lacks vide inadequate or zero services law-and-order crackdowns to pounded the Russian White House, he simultaneously jailed la­ a class-based analysis of discrimi­ in the areas of health, rehabilita­ boost the imprisonment rate. bor and Left leaders and shut down their presses - all with Bill nation, this route doesn't prom­ tion, counselling, education and Victoria is a hot sales poten­ Clinton's approval. ise a favorable outcome. job training. And institutional tial. Its prisons are about to burst. The vigil, which is supported policies and practices add to the Laws rushed through the State THE ONE FORCE THAT CAN UFf RUSSIA out of its by the women inside, Parliament earlier quagmire is the working class, which is already disgusted with is a means of taking this year expanded capitalism. But it needs time to develop the ideological and or­ their campaign for police powers to de­ ganizational tools to do the job. Boris Yeltsin and his imperial­ humane treatment tain and fingerprint ist buddies in plunder hope to cheat workers of that opportu­ beyond the prison people and collect fo­ nity, but they won't succeed. The world-altering strivings of walls. More than rensic specimens. A Russia's masses for a better life through socialism could not be that, it is a call to recent sentencing strangled by either tsarism or Stalinism. Yeltsin will meet the workingclass women law will lengthen jail same fate as those two historical anachronisms, and at the and men to defend time. More cuts to same hands. C ourselves against the Legal Aid funding, increasing savagery which slash poor of capitalism Austra­ people's access to le­ lian-style. gal advice and repre­ Intifada forces brutality the women have al­ sentation and therefore increase The system is the crime. ready experienced. Strip searches their chances of imprisonment, Fighters to save Fairlea are highly - sexual assaults by the state­ are a certainty. Mideast breakthrough critical of the penal system. are legal in Victoria, used as a IS THE AGREEMENT SIGNED IN SEPTEMBER between Many, including Radical Wo­ routine method of punishing CuttinJ[edge of workers' Israel and the PLO an enormous advance for the cause of Pales­ men and the Freedom Socialist and controlling prisoners. struggfe. The threat to Fairlea tinian self-determination and peace in the Middle East? Or is it Party, have participated in ac­ Fairlea's closure would im­ and the prospect of private pris­ a capitulation by Arafat to Israeli self-interest, an accommoda­ tions like the Wring Out Fairlea pose even worse conditions. The ons are symptoms of a system in tion brokered behind the scenes by the U.S., one that evades or protests that have highlighted women currently live in bunga­ decay. Needing a supply of com­ negates all the real issues of national rights? the structural reasons behind wo­ lows and are self-sufficient to a pliant and cheap labor, capital­ It's both. men's imprisonment: economic degree. Three out of four in­ ism can only make profits by First and foremost, the accords are a victory for the heroic inequality, selective state harass­ mates are mothers, and play ar­ turning workers into slaves, de­ Intifada. An unquenchable movement made up largely of ment, and domestic violence. eas are available for visits with molishing social services, and women and teenagers with stones in their hands has forced se­ On the economic front, Aus­ children. locking people up. It will be an rious concessions from one of the most heavily armed jugger­ tralian capitalism is desperate to Fairlea's prisoners would most important win if the alliance of nauts in the world. check its downhill slide. It is likely be reassigned to K Divi­ workers on both sides of the Credit also goes to the peace movement within Israel, which dismantling public and commu­ sion, the former maximum se­ barbed wire forces the Govern­ is battling that same juggernaut on the home front. nity sector services and slicing curity section of the major male ment to keep Fairlea open. But social security payouts. Families metropolitan prison, Pentridge. the major battle is to perma­ CONCRETELY, THE DEAL LEAVES as much unresolved existing on the Sole Parents Ben­ Here, in contrast, the living quar­ nently eliminate the causes of as it resolves. But it broaches the possibility of meaningful im­ efit are trapped below the pov­ ters are actual concrete cages! imprisonment. . provements in the situations of Palestinians at least on the erty line; 86 percent of these Hands off Fairlea! No prl­ Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank: respite from war, better­ households are female-headed. Punishment for profit. vateprisons! End strip searches! ing of material and economic conditions, increased self-gov­ Survival necessitates welfare The Victorian government wants lob training, drug rehabili­ ernment, and the opportunity to develop politically. "fraud." Those who don't de­ to use Fairlea's shutdown to clear tation, and quality education The lasting solution for the people of Israel and Palestine clare a little extra income can be the way for private prisons. Its and healthcare while in prison! will be a bilateral, secular, socialist state. But on the road to - and are - jailed. September budget includes a Legalise drugs for personal revolution, hard-won reform is worth recognizing, celebrating, Women are also dispropor­ provision for building a for-profit use! Legalise prostitution! and building on. C tionately incarcerated for drug replacement for Fairlea. Wages for prisoners! An in­ addiction, prostitution-related Incarceration for profit is be- dependent living wage foralllC r December 1993-February 1994 Freedom Socialist 11

Voices of Color ]

BY YOLANDA ALANIZ ers from the fields and assigned representatives in the Demo­ them to campaign for Robert Ken­ crat and Republican parties will n an editorial called "Cesar nedy for president. inevitably be compromised to Chavez: The Reality" (Hous­ • Compromises with labor bu­ the pOint of becoming an in­ ton Chronicle, May 4, 1993), reaucrats, for instance the 1974 trinSic part of the system of Clara I Daniel Suldran wrote: "There shutdown of the secondary boy­ oppression ... are lessons to be learned from the cott of Safeway to appease the These are the stark options Fraser lives of great people. But they are AFL-CIO brass. facing the UFW - to be a tool instructive only if we look hon­ • Obsession with religion, of the bosses or a revolution­ estly at how they lived." which transformed militant pick­ ary leadership. There is no Workers and oppressed people ets and demonstrations into meek middle ground... Change [in Socialism for skeptics owe Chavez a great deal for his prayer vigils and masses. the UFW] will require convul­ unwavering commitment to • Unswerving pacifism, which sive reversals: THE '90S MAY NOT BE the worst of times, but they're no farmworker organizing. He was a during strikes led to forswearing 1. The union must become picnic for radicals in the mega-capitalist countries. central catalyst in the many physical defense in favor of fast- democratic, with vastly in­ We are playing to pretty tough crowds, where the hardest ar­ trailblazing victories of the creased local control, mor to pierce is a thick shield of cynicism. Disbelief in progress United Farm Workers - rank-and-file decision­ and resigned acceptance of the status quo are the intellectual winning contracts, initi- making, the free flow high fashions that are smothering minds once open to bold vi­ ating effective boycotts, of ideas, and a repudia- sions and grand prospects. raising wages and improv­ Mter Ch3vez: tion of red-baiting. And what with the tatters of Stalinism on one hand and newly ing field conditions. But 2. The union must resplendent swastikas on the other, it's not easy to persuade Chavez also made tragic break with the Demo­ people that the promises of socialism can and must be for real. mistakes. The best tribute Where next crat Party and call for A typical dialog between a Representative Skeptic (RS) and rev­ we can pay him is an ob­ a Labor Party. olutionary me can last for hours, but here's a condensed version. jective assessment of his 3. UFW must sepa­ political legacy that will rate itself from the RS: WORLD SOCIALISM? Get outta here. Face facts. Every help advance the move­ fortheUFW? Catholic Church, the place that used to be communist is going capitalist. ment to which he devoted ideologue of working­ CF: THEY'RE GOING TO CAPITALIST HELL is where his life. class martyrdom. they're going. The long-entrenched imperial countries are writh­ 4. It must drop the ing with delirium tremens. The bigshots "won" the Cold War by Winning ingredi­ self-defeatingprindple starving out, drive-by bombing, and CIA-ing everybody else, but ents. Cesar Chavez and of padfism and adopt the price of victory is defeat on the home front. Dolores Huerta, founders a policy of organized Our cities are huge dumping grounds for all our radioactive of the association which self-defense against problems - poverty, homeless ness, joblessness, crime, illiteracy, in 1973 became the United grower violence. ill-health, ecological rape, racism, sexism, homophobia, domestic Farm Workers of America, S. The UFW must and random violence, addictions, ad nauseam. There is less of ev­ AFL-CIO, led the young find its support among erything for everybody except stress and taxes and fury. Cueball­ union to a string of dy­ militant labor, the headed Hitler wannabes menace the innocent, and bourgeOiS lib­ namic accomplishments. movements of the most erals give us spastic colons. As Megan Cornish and I oppressed [like the If this is the best that the U.S. Superpower can do, with its In­ wrote in The Chicano newest farmworkers, formation Highways and smart bombs and self-congratulation, Struggle: a Racial or Na- Mixtec Indians from somebody better call Dr. Kevorkian. tional Movement?: ~ Mexico], and radicals, "Early UFW successes ~ who will not try to RS: BUT AT LEAST WE HAVE democracy, freedom of emerged from an unbeat­ shroud the movement choice - like that sensitive sheriff from Picket Fences says in the able combination of fac­ in accommodationist bank ad. We say what we please, go where we want, and shop 'til tors. The leadership was deals. we drop. Nobody tells me how to think! Under communism, the brilliant, audacious and 6. The union must state makes the rules and dictates opinion - and one size fits all. dedicated. It was sensitive . Cesar Chavez In 1965 march irrevocably stand for to and pushed forward by the rights of undocu­ CF: YOUR VAUNTED FREE WILL and open mind are illu­ the masses of insurgent mented workers, drop sions. You too are conditioned and molded, only more subtly. farmworkers. The union all U.S. chauvinism and Your choices run out when your money does. The goodies in gained immeasurably from sup­ ing for non-violence. prioritize the organization of the shops may be piled as high as Michael Jordan's slam dunks or port provided by the civil rights, • Campaigns against "illegal" 'illegals.' as wide as Magic Johnson's field goals, but no cash, no carry. Chicana/o and radical student immigrants, like the 1968 one in If the union adopts these To the homeless, choice means sleeping under a bridge or over movements and national labor. which the union reported un­ options, it will have the op­ a grate. For poor women, the right to abortion (tenuous for any "Courageous and winning tac­ documented workers to the U.S. portunity to once again be­ female) might as well be the right to travel on the Starship Enter­ tics grew out of this labor/civil Border Patrol. come a dynamic social/labor prise. And just try to go to Havana or Hanoi or Camp David. rights synthesis. Strikes and boy­ • The development of bureau­ movement. It will become a Or just try to be openly gay in the military. Just try to be a cotts reinforced each other as anti­ cratic practices and paranoid anti­ radical movement for work­ Marxist and still keep your job, unharassed. labor injunctions were defied. communism, which drove out ers' power because that is the Even for those whose plastic is still gOOd, choice is a farce. UFW built a multi-racial union, many of the people most dedi­ only solution to the oppres­ Time or Newsweek. Democans or Republicrats. Letterman or Leno. encouraged the involvement of cated to the union's original aims. sion suffered by farmworkers. Stallone or Schwarzenegger. Gimme a break, stop the insanity. women, and did not exclude en­ The impetus for these You are relentlessly bombarded with pro-establishment propa­ ergetiC support from the Left." No middle ground. The ex­ changes will arise from the ganda, images and emotional appeals all your life on every front. cruciating '90s demand that UFW farmworkers themselves. They The narrow limits of your freedoms make you as broadly con­ Chavez retreats from mili­ re-arm itself to represent its con­ will force the union to meet formist as any drill team. tant action. For the most part, stituents.lftheunion is willing to their needs or get out of the the union's early gains have been learn from Chavez' life-to emu­ way. As the farm workers have RS: BUT SOCIALISM HAS PROVED it can't compete. lost. Today farmworkers live in late his absorption in champi­ proven time and time again, CF: NOT SO. IT'S NEVER BEEN TESTED on a level playing worse conditions and earn less oning the most exploited work­ when they are ready to move field. The contestants were never evenly matched. than they did 15 years ago. UFW ers but abandon the treacherous they will explode into action." The 1917 Russian revolution had more stacked against it than once claimed 100,000 members; policies which hold la causa back a feminist on MTV. The country was impoverished, industrially today it reportedly has fewer than - it can still fulfill its mandate. And when they do, they and culturally backward, and exhausted by World War I. Every 10,000 members under contracts. What we wrote in The Chi­ will ignite the whole of both single major capitalist nation swooped in for the kill, aiding and Meanwhile, UFW continues to cano Struggle is even more clearly the Chicana/o and labor move­ abetting the homegrown white-guard opposition. concentrate on boycotts, now a true today: ments. iSi se puedeJ Cl The Soviet people repelled the invaders. But asking socialism substitute for strikes rather than to show its stuff in such a situation is like expecting a bullied an adjunct to them, and neglects " Any effective union must rec­ To order The Chicano slum kid to excel in school without breakfast, lunch, warm union organizing. ognize the fundamental and Struggle, please send $4.00 for clothes, notebooks, or defenders. The strange thing is not that a What stalled the movement? irreconcilable division between each set ofnine installments plus totalitarian, bureaucratic gang took over, but that the fledgling • Reliance on Democrat Party the owning class and the laboring $2.S0 for postage to the Free­ Soviet Union survived at all- and then managed to provide ba­ pOliticians, as in 1968 when class. A union that tries to make domSodalist, S018 Rainier Ave. sic security for its inhabitants and to give the economic vampires Chavez pulled seasoned organiz- peace with the capitalists or their South, Seattle, WA 98118. quite a run for their money over 70 years. But when we overthrow the super-suits in the super-economies - the U.S., Japan, and Germany - there will be no need for req­ uisitioning, hence no need for warlords to control the dispensing Melba Windoffer 1910-1993 of scarce consumer goods and natural resources. No foreign coun­ For most of her 82 years, Melba Windoffer, "Melba was a pillar, an innovator, a fount tries will invade anybody. Our revolution will set everybody free. who died in Seattle on July 18, inspired other of energy... a rock of reason and integrity radicals With her Marxist and feminist fight­ greatly respected for her talents as organizer, RS: VERY PRETIY UTOPIAN DREAMS. Socialism, like the ing spirit. Windoffer joined the Socialist Work­ lecturer, writer, consultant, labor historian, Messiah, will furnish instant peace on earth, good will toward all, ers Party in 1936 and helped found both the and keeper of the ethical flames ... She was a a patched-up ozone layer and reforestation, safe sex, a two-day Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women. visionary with great practical skins and a work week, a cure for AIDS and breast cancer, and Caribbean She was aleader in the two organizations until leader who never left the ranks ... The spirit of cruises featuring caviar and sashimi for the masses! the onset of Alzheimer's disease and her reSig­ her bravery and staunchness lives on in the CF: CEASE YOUR SNORTING and scoffing. If that's what nations in 1981. new radicals of today." we want, that's what we'll have. And your sights are too low--:­ Clara Fraser, Melba's colleague over many At a memorial on August 8 at New Freeway one work-day a week max. decades, describes Windoffer as someone who Hall, Seattle FSP headquarters, Windoffers Leon Trotsky defined socialism as "shared abundance," like the "unfailingly and unflinchingly lived her life friends and comrades said a final goodbye by economic democracy in an affluent family. We've got the abun­ as a totally dedicated and extremely prin­ sharing their stories of how Melba helped dance - we just have to transform the way we distribute it. cipled exponent and practitioner of revOlu­ them discover a rich heritage of SOcialist, tionary socialism. feminist, labor, and civil rights militancy. Cl • • • This was fun. I like debating. If my skeptical (and other) read­ ers want to pitch more balls to my bat, we'll do it again. Cl 12 Freedom SOcialist December 1993-February 1994

Eyewitness account Radical Women delegates to East Europe & Russia find anger & hope among the ruins of Stalinism BY 50 DOCEKAI. AND ADRIENNE WElLER erty, reactionary nationalism, and war. where the battle over privatization rages. struction trade whom we met. In the U.S., we have long lived under We were also inspired by Natalya, a Docekal and Weller were the representa­ the official Big Lie that homelessness, job­ Russia. People here despise Yeltsin. Yet leader of a ten-year-old study group on the tives ofRadical Women (RW) on a nine-week, lessness, and deprivation are unavoidable. everyone we met voted for him in the formerly underground ideas of Trotsky. seven-country toUT of Eastern Europe, the But to East Europeans, these horrors are April 1993 referendum as a rejection of Lesbians and gays, too, are advancing. Balkans, and Russia in early 1993. Their fresh and stunning. Stalinism. They have just won back the legalization goals were to study the post-Stalinist political In Russia, women are 80 percent of the Yeltsin's opponents within the govern­ of homosexuality, a gain of the 1917 revo­ climate firsthand; meet radicals and femi­ newly unemployed. A new ideological war ment (or recently expelled from it) gener- lution that was sold out by Stalinism. nists and share ideas; and establish ongoing against women accompanies their They are bravely confronting a rising collaboration. push out of the job market. "Experts" right wing that is new to Russia. Adrienne Weller is a Jewish leader in the tell working women that they are too Oregon anti-fascist movement, past Portland masculine and that childcare centers Estonia. Jewish community leaders RW Organizer, and member of American make children either passive or mur­ are mobilizing to stop the glorifica­ Federation of State, County, and Munidpal derous. The fledgling feminist move­ tion of Nazis by members of the reac­ Employees Local 328. Her grandparents hail ment, a first in RUSSia, is ridiculed in tionary capitalist government. Here, from Russia, Poland, Hungary and Germany. the media. as elsewhere, the restoration of private Susan Docelcal is a Soviet affairs expert, But women have been in the profit has strengthened the right wing veteran writer and designer for the Freedom workforce for decades and are strong, of the nationalist movement, led to Socialist, militant mainstay ofSeattle's lesbi­ skilled and confident. They are look­ vicious scapegoating of Jews, Romani an/gay movement, and member of Political ing for ways to defend themselves and (Gypsies), and immigrants, and StaffWorlcers Union Local 1. While on tour, they are leaming fast. Their leader­ spawned a fascist movement. she visited family in the Czech Republic. ship is key to winning a future for all free of exploitation and coercion. Poland. In Warsaw, we participated ay Day in Moscow! Balloons, in rallies called by education and hos­ picket signs! Tens of thou­ Red carpet rolled out for pital workers striking against Lech sands of union women and Radical Women. Every place we Walesa's budget cutbacks. Mmen defiantly converging on went, women and feminist men were People were also outraged about Red Square under a ban­ the pope's meddling in government ner that proclaimed "No and its results - prayer replacing sex Privatization" -and we education in the schools and the ille­ were part of those galization of abortion. In elections in marching thousands. September after we returned home, Over and over again indignation over these issues swept on our tour, we were members of the former Communist among people like these, Party back into Parliament, where they on the march against gained a majority. capitalism because it is ravaging their lives. Czech Republic. The new heads of Women, who are hurt the Czech Communist the worst by capitalism's Party Women's Club are return, were the most feminist to the core. They . exuberant in embracing introduced us to every­ us as allies. One woman one, from a Trotskyist at the May Day rally was Member of Parliament to so thrilled with the Radi­ (Upper right) East Berlin: thousands of women numerous women's cal Women leaflet we poured Into the streets to protest Germany's groups. They are the liv­ were distributing that new anti-abortion law. (Above) Poland's main ing proof that the fall of she gave us 20 rubles. A TV station Interviewed RW's delegates about Stalinism opens the door marvelous welcome! women In the U.S. Left to right: Su Docekal; to new radical leaders. We went to Eastern producer Anna Pawlowska; Adrienne Weller; Europe because we be­ Polish feminist and TV personality Marla Serbia and Croatia. lieve that the overthrow Moneta-Malewska. (Right) Unshadedcountrles Capitalism has trans­ of Stalinism has opened on map are those Docekal and Weller visited. formed Stalinist rulers the door to the building Milosevic in Serbia and of genuine socialism. We came back con­ surprised and delighted to meet Tudjman in Croatia into vinced that the soaring aspirations of the revolutionaries from the land of private profiteers locked 1917 Soviet Revolution are alive and well, Wall Street. They were excited head-to-head in a cata­ especially in East European women. The about forging an international strophic grab for power onslaught of capitalism makes the current movement for socialism and ea­ and wealth. They are op­ environment hostile to these aspirations, ger to learn how RW combines posed by groups like the but future prospects are bright. Freed from Marxism and feminism. Zagreb Women's Lobby the undemocratic mess that masqueraded In Poland a feminist doctor put in Croatia and Women as communism, workers can now begin to us on national TV. Our show gal­ in Black, a feminist, anti­ create a society that passes the Marxist vanized the producer into creat­ nationalist organization litmus test: Are women equal? ing a series on Polish feminists. In of Serbs, Croats and Mus­ the Czech Republic, women from lims. Staying with Wo­ Crisis for all - women first. As miles away travelled overnight to men in Black in Belgrade, the profit system makes its shaky re-entry hear us speak on U.S. women, the we had front-row seats in the former Soviet bloc, the gains made failure of Westem capitalism, and thetheo­ ate little enthusiasm because they offer no as they risked arrest and torture by hold­ under a system of nationalized wealth and ries of Leon Trotsky, who spearheaded the solutions. They also favor adopting "free ing their weekly anti-war vigil in defiance centralized planning - the guaranteed international fight against Stalin's betrayal enterprise," only more slowly. The hope of a government ban on street actions. rights to a job, an education, childcare, of the Russian Revolution. for an uncorrupted anti-Yeltsin movement Shockingly, U.S. anti-pornography cru­ healthcare, and abortion - are being Following are some highlights and con­ lies with independent unionists, like the sader Catharine MacKinnon is trying to smashed. Everywhere we saw chaos, pov- elusions from our visit to the war zones dynamic women organizers in the con- to page 9

Vancouver, Canada-Nov. 20, 8:00pm Dinner 6:30pm. Croatian Cultural Centre, 3250 Commercial Dr. Call 604-688-5195 or 874-0535. New York City-Dec. 5, 1:00pm Buffet 4:00pm. Center of the Rainbow, 147 W. 25th St., 12th FI. Call 212-677-7002 or 491-5163. Melbourne-Date & site to be announced For more information call 03-386-5065. Docekal and Weller have already spoken in five U.S. West Coast cities. If you would like to have them appear in your area, please contact the RW National Office, 523-A Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110. Phone: 415-864-1278.